ADB donates $440,000 to South Sudan and Sudan flood victims
The African Development Bank Group has approved an emergency assistance relief package of $440,000 to fund ongoing humanitarian and emergency relief efforts in areas recently hit by floods in South Sudan and Sudan.The package, from the bank’s special relief fund, will be split nearly equally between the two countries and...
Criminal gangs thirst for control of avocado trade in Kenya, southern Africa
As Kenyan fruit farmers get ready to take advantage of the expanding avocado market in China and other Far East countries, the Global Initiative Against Organised Crime warns about the emergence of the crop as a target of the criminal underworld in eastern and southern Africa. In the past six-month...
Kenya sets up $1.2m revolving youth employment fund
Kenya’s ministry of ICT, Innovation and Youth Affairs has launched a Ksh120 million ($1.2 million) initiative dubbed Future Bora (Bright Future) to support organisations that create income generation opportunities for groups designated economists as vulnerable. The demographics covered by the scheme include orphans, persons with a disability, youth displaced by...
Nigeria’s Okonjo-Iweala wins WTO director-general seat
Nigeria’s former finance minister and a former managing director of the World Bank, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has become the first female Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), shattering the glass ceiling. Okonjo-Iweala broke the glass ceiling, emerging as the first African and the first female to attain the position...
From the Maria Theresa Thaler, to the rupee, to the Kenya shilling
Early use of currency in Kenya commenced with the Arab influence who were among the first to use currency as we know it. In Muscat, they used a silver coin called the Maria Theresa Thaler (MT$), first minted in Austria in 1741 and, not surprisingly, they continued using it when...
Blast from the past: The evolution of the Kenyan currency
Two years after the unveiling new currency in December by the Central Bank of Kenya’s, the country seems to have put behind it the appearance of the money that characteristically bore portraits of heads of government and state.The present currency coins and notes unveiled on December 10, 2018 bear wildlife...
$170,000 banana, potato factory puts money in pockets of Kakamega youths
With Ksh17 million ($170,000) World Bank and national government funding, youths in a remote village in western Kenya are going about their lives with a spring in their legs. Reason? They are now reaping the benefits of a value addition factory in Khwisero subcounty in Kakamega County that is now...
Market oriented horticultural smallholder farmers hit it big
Potato farming, among other horticultural crops, is the mainstay for farmers at Mwendi Kurima Cooperative Society in Engineer Town, Nyandarua County. Initially started as a self-help group by 13 farmers, Mwendi Kurima Group, whose membership currently stands at 350, it has weathered many storms over the years to become one...
Fishermen want Kenya, Uganda to resolve marine resources dispute
Fishermen in western Kenya county of Migori have petitioned Kenya and Uganda to agree on how to settle a protracted marine resources dispute over fishing boundaries. Lake Victoria, the second largest freshwater lake in the world is a source of livelihood for more than 10 million people in Kenya, Tanzania,...
How geothermal energy powers farming in the heart of Rift Valley
Erratic weather and a burgeoning population that requires food employment is an ever-ticking time bomb. Nakuru, once synonymous with commercial agriculture and industrialisation in Kenya has over the years slipped down the rung, now needs rejigging to breathe new life into the once cleanest town in East Africa. Endowed with...
